


i will love you when you are a still day (i will love you when you are a hurricane)

by lazyfish



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-30 07:07:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19848091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazyfish/pseuds/lazyfish
Summary: Hunter goes to recruit May for his fight against HYDRA; he gets more than he bargains for.





	i will love you when you are a still day (i will love you when you are a hurricane)

Arizona was hot - the sort of dry, breathless heat that swallowed everything whole. It was even hotter walking on the pavement, and the distance from the curb where Hunter had parked to the front door felt like an eternity.

His throat felt like sandpaper when he tried to swallow down his apprehension, and it wasn’t just because of the aridity. Mel had left without even saying goodbye, and he had spent the last six months trying to cope with that. He was used to people leaving, and he really shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was. He had been surprised she left, and that was what made it hurt like hell. She was like everyone else, in the end. She left, and he picked up his pieces, and he would move on.

Ringing the doorbell was the first step of moving on, and he pressed his thumb into the button with a bit more force than was necessary. Hunter heard the echo of it through the door, but strain as he might he couldn’t hear any footsteps. His fingers curled around the grip of his gun. He wasn’t a fan of breaking and entering into his ex-girlfriend’s father’s house, but if neither of them answered the door -

It swung open without fanfare.

_ Holy buggering shit. _

Hunter’s knees damn near gave out from underneath him. He swayed dangerously, but kept himself upright by sheer force of will. He had to be hallucinating, because there was no way… Actually, there were several ways. He hadn’t expected that Mel would - that he would -

“Close your mouth, you’ll catch flies.” The ICER he hadn’t realized was pressed to his chest disappeared, and Hunter clacked his jaw shut, following Melinda’s wordless order to step into the house. He shut the door behind him, trapping the cool, air-conditioned air inside with them. He still felt hot and flushed, though, because Mel was  _ pregnant _ .

He didn’t know what to say, so he stood there in the foyer, looking like an absolute idiot.

“Why are you here, Hunter?”

Why had he been there? It took longer than it should’ve to pull the answer from his brain, because it’s hard to fathom being here for any other reason than to find out he probably knocked his ex up. Unless Mel had rebounded quickly, which turned his stomach even more than the idea of being a father did.

“I needed help.” She was the one he always turned to, wasn’t she? She was the one he trusted to have his back, the one he had thought… well, whatever had thought, he had thought wrong, so it didn’t really matter.

“Coulson sent you?”

“Coulson let me go.” There was a difference there, an important one. Hunter had come to her - had  _ chosen _ to come to her.

Mel pinched the bridge of her nose as if warding off a headache. “I can’t help you.”

_ Well, yeah _ , he wanted to snap. But apparently they were ignoring the elephant in the room, so Hunter nodded, slow but decisive. “Guess I’ll have to come up with a Plan B, then.” He hadn’t come up with a Plan B before because there was no situation where he could fathom Mel not wanting to help him. She might’ve walked away from him, but she had cared. He had needed to cling to the idea she cared, and that had made him confident. Cocky, she would probably say.

(He knew what Plan B was already. Plan B was going in alone, but no one else needed to know that.)

“I should get going.” He obviously wasn’t wanted. Mel hadn’t even looked him in the eyes once since had stepped into the house, hadn’t invited him past the front door. She had left without saying goodbye, she was pregnant and hadn’t even thought to drop him a line, she _ didn’t care about him.  _

_ Stop thinking about her. She doesn’t miss you. _

The voice in his head that had plagued him the last six months had been right. She didn’t care, she didn’t miss him, she -

“You can stay the night, if you’d like. It’s a long way back to Massachusetts.” The words sounded hollow, more like a perfunctory asking than any actual desire to have him around.

“I’m not going back to the Playground.” It was a safe assumption for her to make, but a wrong one. 

“Oh. Well, wherever you’re going… you can stay the night.” Hunter wanted her to look at him, so he could suss out how much she actually meant what she was saying. She had made the offer twice, which was no small thing from someone who hated small talk as much as Mel did, but she still wouldn’t look at him. It was almost like she didn’t see him at all.

“Is your father alright with that?”

“He will be.”

Hunter had run out of excuses, so he nodded once. “I’ll stay, then, if it’s not too much of an imposition.” Maybe Mel didn’t want him there, but if she had wanted him gone, she would’ve said so. He’d take whatever he could get.

“It’s not.” Mel disappeared up a staircase before he could respond, leaving Hunter standing in the middle of the entranceway, confused. He didn’t want to wander through Melinda’s father’s house, but he also didn’t want to keep standing there until… until what? Mel decided to speak to him again? 

He’d be waiting a while.

Hunter wandered forward, into a living room with the most atrocious looking couch in existence. He wanted to smile, but couldn’t manage it. If he had come here under better circumstances, he and Mel would have bantered about how ugly the couch was - and then when her father was asleep, they would’ve defiled the thing.

A shiver ran up his spine. Thinking of having sex with Mel was not something he should’ve been doing at the moment.

He sat on the couch, and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

The footsteps that next came down the hall didn’t have Melinda’s familiar cadence, so Hunter wasn’t surprised when her father came through the door instead. The older man took one look on Hunter sitting on the couch, then turned around. “Mellie!” He called in the general direction of the staircase. The next words were in Mandarin, and Hunter sighed. Mel had insisted she would teach him one day, but they had never gotten past the basics. Apparently, hearing him speak her mother tongue was an aphrodisiac, because they ended up in bed together without fail.

A minute later, Mel was downstairs again, perched on the arm of the couch but still resolutely ignoring Hunter as she had a rapid conversation with her father, still in Mandarin. He seemed irritated with her, and as the conversation wore on, Melinda was becoming more frustrated with him, too.

Maybe it would be better if he left.

Hunter began scrolling through a mental list of excuses when Melinda’s father left again, shouting a few parting words over his shoulder.

Hunter was fully prepared for Melinda to get up and leave again, but she didn’t. She didn’t talk to him, either, but she didn’t leave - just kept sitting on the arm of the sofa like she wasn’t six months pregnant and it wasn’t the least comfortable seating option in the room.

He couldn’t take it anymore.

“Did I do something wrong?” It was the only thing he could think to ask. He must’ve done  _ something, _ because people didn’t up and go without reason.

Mel stood. Walked over to where he was sitting. Sat on the couch next to him. Sighed. “No, Lance. You didn’t.”

“Okay,” he answered, hoarse. “Because it feels like I did, and I - I’m sorry?” He didn’t know what else to say. Hunter still couldn’t fathom her reasons for keeping this from him, especially since she had yet to confirm or deny the baby she was creating was his, and that was starting to freak him out a little.

He jumped when her hand brushed against his, so shocked she was initiating contact he didn’t know what to do with himself. Muscle memory served him well, though, and he tangled his fingers through hers before he really processed they were holding hands.

“This is all about me. My baggage. I’m sorry you got sucked into it.”

_ Sucked into it. _ Like he didn’t want to be a part of this, like he didn’t want to be with her, the woman he still loved so much he ached with it even after all this time. He didn’t have the vocabulary for how this was eleven kinds of fucked up, for how much he wanted to be here with her - how he wanted to turn back time for her.

“I kind of thought we were getting better at the sharing baggage thing.” She told him about Bahrain, he told her about Basra. They shared their ghosts, their failures, their fears. They couldn’t take each other’s pain, but for those moments, they could hold it together.

It hurt she didn’t trust him to do that for her now.

“You -”

“ _ I _ what, Mel? Because it seems to me like the whole problem here is that there was no  _ me _ . You up and left - which, by the way, sucked because I  _ told you _ how much I fear abandonment, thanks for remembering - and apparently decided to double down and not tell me about the child you’re carrying, which I assume is mine!” Hunter didn’t snatch his hand away, because there was no guarantee he would get it back if he did, but his breathing was ramping up dangerously. “I get it, you have shit! I’m not a genius but it doesn’t take one to realize having a kid would freak you out after -” He didn’t say Bahrain, because she wouldn’t want him to and he didn’t need to for her to get his meaning. “But I really thought you wanted to share that shit with me. And you won’t even do that without your dad telling you to.”

“He’s yours,” Mel whispered. She didn’t say anything else.

Hunter swallowed hard. He had a son. One who was yet to be born, yes, but he had a  _ son. _

Melinda had shit, but so did Hunter, and a lot of that shit revolved around his own father. Maybe in another universe, she was in a good enough place to be able to comfort him and guide him through his shit. Right now, though, Hunter wasn’t sure he trusted Melinda to breathe without splitting at the seams, so he swallowed down the tornado of emotion inside of him and held her hand.

“I was going to tell you,” Mel breathed. “But I kept getting scared, and then enough time had passed, I thought maybe a clean break would be better for you. For us.”  _ All three of us.  _ She didn’t need to say the words for Hunter to hear them.

There had been a time that, when she was scared, Melinda ran to him instead of away.

“You shouldn’t have made that choice for me.”

“I know.” She released his hand silently, standing up from the couch with surprising grace given the size of her stomach. “Stay the night, Lance.”

He tried to find meaning in her words beyond what she had already told him, but failed. He would stay the night, and after that was a mystery.

\---

Sleeping alone on the couch was a reprieve. Mr. May had spent all of dinner looking between him and Mel and asking pointed questions about how long Hunter would be staying and what was going to happen between them - questions Hunter didn’t have answers to. Melinda was just as stony-faced as always; Hunter had obviously imagined the tears shimmering on her lower lid when her father asked if Hunter would be back for the baby’s birth.

In any case, the couch was comfortable, or at least as comfortable as a couch was expected to be. It gave him space from Mel. God knew if he was upstairs, even if he was in a different bedroom, he wouldn’t have been able to resist slipping into bed beside her in the middle of the night.

Sleep didn’t come easy, though. He didn’t sleep much on the best of nights, but now there were a hundred new thoughts chasing him around in circles. All Hunter could do was stare at the unfamiliar ceiling and hope his body took pity on him.

It was just past three in the morning when he heard familiar footsteps plunking down the stairs, slightly heavier than they normally were. Hunter steadied his breathing, just in case Melinda didn’t want him to be awake. He could pretend to be asleep and she could… watch him sleep. Because that wasn’t weird at all.

The footsteps drew nearer, and Hunter could smell Mel’s jasmine perfume. 

“I know you’re awake.”

He opened his eyes, just barely able to make out her silhouette in the darkness. “That obvious, huh?”

“I know you.” Beat. “Come outside with me?”

The proud part of him wanted to hesitate, but he couldn’t - physically couldn’t. He was halfway off the couch before she had even finished the question.

Mel led them out to the back patio, flicking on a light as she went. The dull amber glow of the single lamp cast shadows everywhere, and Hunter drummed his fingers against the holster on his belt. He knew nothing was going to happen - Ward wouldn’t jump out of the shadows - but nerves were funny things.

“I found out two days after I left,” Mel began without preamble. She sat in one of the patio chairs, gesturing to the other one across the table from her. “And then I spent the next month trying to figure out what the fuck I was going to do. I was going to, you know,” once again, they heard the things the other wouldn’t say, “but it was just… I couldn’t get rid of something that was so much of you.”

Even in the dim lighting he could make out the bob of her throat as she swallowed. “I don’t understand why you don’t hate me.”

“I’m angry,” Hunter said slowly. “I don’t want you to think I’m  _ fine _ with all this, but I don’t hate you. Even if you told me to leave right now, and never come back… I don’t think I can hate you.” It wasn’t that he lacked the capacity to hate. Hunter hated plenty of people. But he couldn’t hate Mel, not when she was  _ her. _

“I don’t want you to leave.” It was the closest she had come to saying what she did want.

“I can’t stay if it’s going to be like this, Mel. I can’t do awkward, I can’t pretend I don’t -” He cut himself off.

“You don’t what, Hunter?”

“I don’t love you!” He snapped. “It’s been six months and I still love you like it was yesterday that you were mine, okay? And I want to be around for our kid, I want to be in his life, but I don’t think I can do that if I can’t have you too, Mel. I want  _ you. _ ” Even if she was like everyone else because she walked away, she was different, too. Different because she saw good in him, different because she saw all the ways he could be better. Different because she challenged him, different because  _ she loved him too _ . Or she had.

He hated how his emotions kept getting the better of him, how he kept spilling his thoughts all over her like poison. He didn’t want to hurt her but Hunter couldn’t help but feel like every time he opened his mouth that was what he was doing.

“I want you, too.” He could barely hear the words over the buzzing of the cicadas, but they were clear even if they weren’t loud.

“You can have me.” Hunter didn’t know what he was going to do next, if she really wanted him to stay - he wasn’t going to go looking for revenge on HYDRA, but there was no way in hell he’d let his kid come into a world Grant Ward was in. He didn’t know what the plan was, but he didn’t need to, if Mel said yes.

“I  _ want _ you,” Mel repeated, standing.

“Then take me.” Hunter stood, too, challenging Mel to close the gap between them. 

She did, in a single stride. She had to stand on the tips of her toes to fit their lips together, up until the moment when Hunter leaned down so she wouldn’t have to. It was strange, to kiss with space between them, but he couldn’t get any closer with her belly in the way. Hunter’s hands fluttered for a moment, trying to find where to rest since the small of her back wasn’t an option. Eventually they settled on her stomach, one on either side. Tiny movements fluttered under his palms, but Hunter wasn’t paying attention to those - he was paying attention to the warm, soft mouth under his.

Melinda tasted like green tea and homesickness, her movements slightly unsure despite the familiarity of the situation.  _ It’s okay _ , Hunter wanted to say.  _ You’re home now. _ Instead he kissed her harder, more insistently, wilder. Her fingers tangled in his hair, tugging gently to direct his actions. Each pull sent shivers down his spine, and he whimpered into Mel’s mouth.

The moonlight couldn’t hide the flush on Mel’s cheeks when they pulled away, and Hunter swallowed hard. “Hi,” he said, voice husky.

“Hi.” She leaned up to kiss him again.

“Let’s go to bed, Mel.” They had had a long day, it was three o’clock in the morning, and she was pregnant. They could wait to have the rest of the conversation at a better time since their intent was now clearly established.

“Come with me.” He had been planning on it anyways, but the invitation sent warmth huddling low in his stomach. Mel led them back inside, back through the house and into the guest bedroom she had claimed for the time being.

Hunter shut the door behind them.

\---

They woke up in tangles, too twisted to tell whose body parts were whose. The only sure thing was the pregnant belly - that was obviously Mel’s, and the hands splayed across it were obviously Hunter’s.

“Does he normally move around this much?” Hunter asked, kissing Mel’s neck sleepily.

“No. He hasn’t stopped since you came through the door.” Mel sighed quietly, and Hunter went back to rubbing soothing circles on the skin of her stomach, trying to calm his son enough for her to get a reprieve. Hunter’s insides were all twisted up, though; from what Mel had said, it was like the baby knew he was its father. Either that or Mel knew, and the signals she gave riled the baby up. Either way, he was known.

A knock came on the bedroom door. “Mellie? Breakfast is ready.”

Melinda stiffened in his arms. Hunter kissed her shoulder, trying to soothe her. Her father probably already knew what had happened, since Hunter wasn’t on the couch any more, but Mel was a private person. She didn’t like giving people a reason to ask questions about her personal life.

“Best get up, then.” Hunter began the slow process of extricating himself from Mel, internally sighing a little at the loss of contact - but also the welcome breeze. Cuddling in the middle of an Arizona summer wasn’t the most comfortable thing in the world.

“I need a shower,” Melinda grumbled.

“After breakfast,” Hunter promised, pulling on his T-shirt. 

“Then?”

“Then, whatever you want.” Hunter shrugged his shoulders. He knew what he wanted (Mel to come back to the base with him, where he could be sure she was safe), but this was delicate. He didn’t want to push too hard and end up without her again. That was the last thing he wanted, in fact.

“I don’t know what I want,” Mel admitted, crossing her arms. 

“Luckily for you, we have time to figure that out.” Hunter padded over to her, kissing her forehead gently. “Not much time,” they did have a baby on the way, after all, “but enough time that you don’t have to make a decision right this moment.”

The corners of Melinda’s mouth curled up into a rare smile. “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too.”

The Arizona heat wasn’t quite so suffocating anymore, even in the smallness of the guest bedroom. They had hope.

They had a future - together. 

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [tumblr](https://bobbimorseisbisexual.tumblr.com)!


End file.
